''And they thought we wouldn't fight'' - Floyd Phillips Gibbons (fantasy books to read txt) 📗

to the temporary divisional headquarters, where General Pershing addressed to them remarks which have since become known as the commander's "farewell to the First." We had passed out from his command and from then on our orders were to come from the commander of the French army to which the division was to be attached.

General Pershing stood on a mound at the rear of a beautiful château of Norman architecture, the Château du Jard, located on the edge of the town of Chaumont-en-Vexin. The officers ranged themselves in informal rows on the grass. Birds were singing somewhere above in the dense, green foliage, and sunlight was filtering through the leaves of the giant trees.

The American commander spoke of the traditions which every American soldier should remember in the coming trials. He referred to the opportunity then present for us, whose fathers established liberty in the New World, now to assist the Old World in throwing off its yoke of tyranny. Throughout this touching farewell to the men he had trained—to his men then leaving for scenes from which some of them would never return—the commander's voice never betrayed the depth of feeling behind it.

That night we made final arrangements for the morrow's move. I travelled with the artillery where orders were received for the reduction of all packs to the lightest possible as all men would be dismounted and the baggage wagons would be reserved for food, ammunition and officers' luggage only. Officers' packs, by the same order, had to shrink from one hundred and fifty pounds to twenty.

There were many misgivings that night as owners were forced to discard cherished belongings. Cumbersome camp paraphernalia, rubber bathtubs, pneumatic mattresses, extra blankets, socks, sweaters, etc., all parted company from erstwhile owners. That order caused many a heart-break and the abandonment of thousands of dollars' worth of personal equipment in our area.

I have no doubt that some of the village maidens were surprised at the remarkable generosity of officers and men who presented them with expensive toilet sets. Marie at the village estaminet received five of them all fitted in neat leather rolls and inscribed with as many different sets of initials. The old men of the town gloried in the sweaters, woollen socks and underwear.

There was no chance to fudge on the slim baggage order. An officer, bound by duty, weighed each officer's kit as it reached the baggage wagons and those tipping the scales at more than the prescribed twenty pounds, were thrown out entirely. I happened to be watching the loading when it came turn for the regimental band to stow away its encased instruments in one wagon. It must be remembered that musicians at the front are stretcher bearers. The baggage judge lifted the case containing the bass horn.

"No horn in the world ever weighed that much," he said. "Open it up," was the terse command. The case was opened and the base horn pulled out. The baggage officer began operations on the funnel. I watched him remove from the horn's interior two spare blankets, four pairs of socks, an extra pair of pants and a carton of cigarettes. He then inserted his arm up to the shoulder in the instrument's innards and brought forth two apples, a small tin of blackberry jam and an egg wrapped in an undershirt.

The man who played the "umpah umpah" in the band was heartbroken. The clarinet player, who had watched the operation and whose case followed for inspection, saved the inspector trouble by removing an easily hidden chain of sausage. I noticed one musician who was observing the ruthless pillage but, strangely, his countenance was the opposite of the others. He was actually smiling. I inquired the cause of his mirth.

"When we packed up, those guys with the big hollow instruments all had the laugh on me," he said. "Now I've got it on them. I play the piccolo."

All the mounted men under the rank of battery commanders were dismounted in order to save the horses for any possibilities in the war of movement. A dismounted artilleryman carrying a pack and also armed with a rifle, is a most disconsolate subject to view just prior to setting out for a long tramp. In his opinion, he has been reduced too near the status of the despised doughboy.

It really doesn't seem like artillery unless one has a horse to ride and a saddle to strap one's pack on. In the lineup before we started, I saw two of these gunners standing by weighted down with their cumbersome, unaccustomed packs. They were backed against a stone wall and were easing their burdens by resting the packs on the stone ledge. Another one similarly burdened passed and, in a most serious tone, inquired:

"Say, would either of you fellows like to buy another blanket roll?" The reply of two dejected gunners would bar this story from publication.

We were on the march early in the morning, but not without some initial confusion by reason of the inevitable higher orders which always come at the last minute to change programmes. On parallel roads through that zone of unmarred beauty which the Normans knew, our columns swung along the dusty highroads.

There were many who held that America would not be thoroughly awake to the full meaning of her participation in the war until the day there came back from the battlefields a long list of casualties—a division wiped out or decimated. Many had heard the opinions expressed in France and many firmly believed that nothing short of such a shock would arouse our nation to the exertion of the power and speed necessary to save the Allied cause from defeat.

On this march, that thought recurred to some and perhaps to many who refrained soberly from placing it in words. I knew several in the organisation who felt that we were on our way to that sacrifice. I can not estimate in how many minds the thought became tangible, but among several whom I heard seriously discussing the matter, I found a perfect willingness on their part to meet the unknown—to march on to the sacrifice with the feeling that if the loss of their life would help bring about a greater prosecution of the war by our country, then they would not have died in vain.

If this was the underlying spirit, it had no effect whatever upon outward appearances which could hardly be better described than with Cliff Raymond's lilting words: "There are roses in their rifles just the same." If this move was on to the sacrifice—if death awaited at the end of the road, then those men were marching toward it with a song.

It takes a hard march to test the morale of soldiers. When the feet are road-sore, when the legs ache from the endless pounding of hobnails on hard macadam, when the pack straps cut and burn to the shoulder blades, and the tin hat weighs down like a crown of thorns, then keep your ear open for a jest and if your hearing is rewarded, you will know that you march with men.

Many times that first day, those jests came to enliven dejected spirits and put smiles on sweat-rinsed faces. I recall our battery as it negotiated the steep hills. When the eight horses attached to the gun carriages were struggling to pull them up the incline, a certain subaltern with a voice slow, but damnably insistent, would sing out, "Cannoneers, to the wheels." This reiterated command at every grade forced aching shoulders already weary with their own burdens to strain behind the heavy carriages and ease the pull on the animals.

Once on a down grade, our way crossed the tracks of a narrow gauge railroad. Not far from the crossing could be seen a dinky engine puffing and snorting furiously in terrific effort to move up the hill its attached train of loaded ammunition cars. The engine was having a hard fight when some light-hearted weary one in our column gave voice to something which brought up the smile.

"Cannoneers, to the wheel!" was the shout and even the dignified subaltern whose pet command was the butt of the exclamation, joined in the wave of laughs that went down the line.

An imposing château of the second empire now presided over by an American heiress, the wife of a French officer, was regimental headquarters that night. Its barns and outbuildings were the cleanest in France according to individuals who had slept in so many barns that they feel qualified to judge.

"Painfully sanitary," said a young lieutenant, who remarked that the tile floor might make a stable smell sweeter but it hardly offered the slumbering possibilities of a straw shakedown. While the men arranged their blankets in those quarters, the horses grazed and rolled in green paddocks fenced with white painted rails. The cooks got busy with the evening meal and the men off duty started exploring the two nearby villages.

For the American soldier, financial deals were always a part of these explorations. It was seldom more than an hour after his arrival in a populated village before the stock market and board of trade were in full operation. These mobile establishments usually were set up in the village square if headquarters did not happen to be located too close. There were plenty to play the rôles of bulls and bears; there was much bidding and shouting of quotations.

The dealings were not in bushels of wheat or shares in oils or rails. Delicacies were the bartered commodities and of these, eggs were the strongest. The German intelligence service could have found no surer way to trace the peregrinations of American troops about France, than to follow up the string of eggless villages they left behind them.

As soon as billets were located, those without extra duty began the egg canvass of the town. There was success for those who made the earliest start and struck the section with the most prolific hens. Eggs were bought at various prices before news of the American arrivals had caused peasants to set up a new scale of charges. The usual late starter and the victim of arrangements was the officer's striker who lost valuable time by having to take care of his officer's luggage and get the latter established in billets. It was then his duty to procure eggs for the officer's mess.

By that time, all natural egg sources had been obliterated and the only available supply was cornered by the soldiers' board of trade. The desired breakfast food could be obtained in that place only. It was the last and only resort of the striker, who is euphoniously known as a dog robber. In the board of trade he would find soldiers with helmets full of eggs which could be bought at anywhere from two to three times their original price. It was only by the payment of such prices that the officer was able to get anything that could possibly leave a trace of yellow on his chin. If there was a surplus, the soldiers themselves had ample belt room to accommodate it.

In one village tavern, I saw one soldier eat fourteen eggs which he ordered Madame to fry in succession. I can believe it because I saw it. Madame saw it also, but I feel that she did not believe her eyes. A captain of the Judge Advocate's office also witnessed the gastronomic feat.

"Every one of those eggs was bought and paid for," he said. "Our department handles claims for all stolen or destroyed property and we have yet to receive the first claim from this town. Of course every one knows that a hungry man will steal to eat and there are those who hold that theft for the purpose of satisfying demands of the stomach is not theft. But our records show that the American soldier in France is ready to, willing to, and capable of